From all the moments I have lived, I remember only a handful of incidents, some of them crucial, most of them random. The random ones appear like images out of place. Trailing the lonely taillights of a truck in Southern France, the taste of cherry on the lips of my first love, the sulphur smell of neglected bathrooms. The crucial ones stand like air traffic control, guides that placed me on steady ground. Moving to another country, meeting strangers that would become friends, taking jobs that created new possibilities. How can I know that these particular episodes lodged in my mind were decisive, and not all the other moments from which I remember nothing?
So many hours, so many days, such infinite number of situations that are lived through, buried within the folds of time to never surface again. Did they shape me? Or, is who I am something eternal, something that exists despite any situation placed before me? In the same sense, do we have any control over who we become, or is it fixed in some unknowable way?
The day I went sober. The day I went sober, I stared at these thoughts with scattered annoyance, like searching for sharp angles in moist glass. There was a buzz in my ear that filtered in through the window facing out to the world. I heard the faint hum of a pedestrian crossing in the street. I heard the traffic that was always brimming. I heard the scrape of emptiness from inside me, like a porcelain bowl wiped clean again and again until its very molecules come loose. I closed my eyes to focus on the sounds, then opened them again. The leaves seemed to shudder outside like they were reminiscing on last winter, then stayed remarkably still when I glared at them. The day I went sober. The final beat of percussion hit the skin of the drum and I watched the vibrations blur in up-down tremors, faintly, quietly, until it all became still. Then, there was nothing.
I had been sitting in the crux of the armchair, a joint hanging from my lips, a pencil squeezed resolutely between my fingers as several flies helicoptered in vague figures of eight around the living room. I trailed the course of these paragliding fiends, biological spitfires, translucent-wing pilots, like I was trying to decipher Morse code. When had the days become so strange? It was like dreaming and waking up to life, or the other way around, like plunging back into dream. I lived in accordance to the conventions of dreams. Anything can happen and whatever happens the dreamer accepts. I moved the way gazelles do in tiger dreams. I morphed like shapes do in Cézanne paintings. I moved as if I had no shadow and was un-appalled by that horror. I watched myself on a great stage of emotion. As if what I felt in myself was occurring in someone else. I acted out these feelings with such certainty that I could fool my closest friends. I heard words escape my mouth that surprised me. I became a mystery to myself, a phantom ship in the deepest sea.
To recognise the truth of the situation was to have the blindfold slip from my eyes. To see that I’d disguised destruction as novelty, comfort, ‘helpful’ relaxation. Self-sabotage, the way I saw compulsion coil like thorns into my arm. Leaking fangs of an ancient serpent I thought that I could tame. To continue to justify it, to feign ignorance, was an act of madness. These are the moments that could have been forgotten, that, with half-closed eyes, I could blink beyond. Or, they could mark the start to something new.
Several weeks prior, I flipped open Dante’s Divine comedy at a random page and found inscribed a message that seemed placed there especially for me. I fail to find the exact quote once more, making me believe I may have dreamt it. The precise words escape me, but the message is clear. Call upon your inner power. Life is not a mathematical theory, it is only practice. It must be done in action, in doing. To a certain extent, I believe that life is written. You are who you are in a way that is untouched by the environment you are placed in. At the same time, the choices you make matter. They shape your path. Your inner power can lay dormant inside of you.
In times of great strife, I have found reserves I didn’t know I had. Whenever I discover myself fallen, lost in some darkened forest, I can find peace in the knowledge that it’s today. It’s always today. And as long as it’s today, I can change, I can start again, I can face myself. There is only one way to face yourself. Steady. Eyes to the mirror. One breath. Two breath. In the mess you made you’ll find a fragile hope. Yes, you might be afraid, but you must not fear.
Ultimately, you must choose who you will become. You must stand up off the ground, spit the dirt from your mouth and find dignity in trying. Trying is all you’ve got and you must hold it close to you like a flower that blooms in the desert. There is a beauty in its formidability. A tender aggression. A vigour. Cherish it.
cover image / illustration by zuha draws
— iL.
Reading this as I start my day!!🥲🦋 Thank you for insisting on the parts of our life that usually goes unnoticed! The strength to keep trying alone is something very profound. Without that the journey becomes nothing!! But most of the focus are all laid only on not achieving something.. your reading gives a necessary different perspective everytime. Do not stop writing!!
Loved this one